Veteran sports writer Jim Utter covers NASCAR for The Charlotte Observer and its racing site, ThatsRacin.com. In this space, Jim writes about all things NASCAR and other forms of racing which may also be relevant ... or not.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Is the NASCAR banquet over yet?

I can't be certain myself, since I stopped watching, but I assume the Sprint Cup Series awards banquet is over by now. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

Having attended many banquets in person, I can tell you a lot of very well-meaning and smart people do all they can to try to make the evening go as smoothly as possible in hopes of providing an entertaining and enjoyable night recognizing NASCAR's best performers of the season.

And they fail every year.

It's not their fault, though. The banquet is just a glorified dinner party. It's just not designed to be an entertaining event.

Think of the all the business-related dinner parties you've attended. They all have fancy menus, strange-looking desserts. They generally feature some people trying to crack jokes in hopes of lightening the mood. The speeches you are actually there to hear turn out to be generally stale, non-controversial and read word-for-word from a script.

That's basically the Cup awards banquet. Was it boring? Yes. Was it too long? Yes. But it was what it was - a glorified dinner party.

Those who got disappointed or angered because it was not something more were simply working with unrealistic expectations. That's not the fault of the people televising the event; it's the fault of the event itself.

Until the banquet becomes something filled with announcements or award winners that the NASCAR world does not know ahead of time, it's never going to be what some who watch wish it were.

A different camera angle or different commentators isn't going to change the fact there is little at the banquet worthy of true entertainment.